The site of Schönefeld Airport will be further developed parallel to the preparations for the opening of BER in October 2020. Terminal 2 is currently being built in front of Pier North at BER. T2 will have a capacity of 6 million passengers and is scheduled to go into operation at the same time as BER. T2 is a processor building with check-in, baggage drop-off and retrieval, security controls and retail as well as catering facilities. Aircraft will then be boarded via the North Pier.
After the contract was awarded to the general contractor Zechbau GmbH in the summer, construction work started and it is currently on schedule. Reinforcement work on the foundation slabs is in progress at the moment. The ground pipes for the media supply had already been laid beforehand and 148 drilled piles for the foundation had been inserted into the ground on schedule.
Optimisation of operations at SXF
Since Schönefeld airport will remain in operation even after the opening of BER, the quality of the service will continue to be improved. Pier 3a, a part of Terminal A, will therefore be rebuilt starting in January 2019. The aim of the conversion is to optimise operational processes, make better use of building resources and at the same time significantly improve the experience offered to passengers at the airport. In future, the ground floor will be used as a departure and arrival area for Schengen flights. The existing partitions between the gate areas will be removed to create open waiting areas. In future, the upper floor will house a central departure area for non-Schengen flights, including a central border control. The budget for the conversion of Pier 3a is 6.5 million euros. This includes 3.5 million euros for the main construction project by a general contractor. The remaining share is divided between ancillary construction costs, in particular planning services, as well as expenses for construction preparations and additional areas in modular construction (containers).
In order to compensate for the capacity of Pier 3a during the conversion phase, a temporary waiting hall was constructed on the apron and has been in operation since 30 November 2018. It is a temporary building with a floor area of 2,600 m², designed for around 1,000 passengers and it is accessible directly from Terminal A via a passenger boarding bridge. Five departure gates are available to passengers in the temporary waiting hall. Passengers can reach the aircraft by bus from three gates and by foot from two gates. The budget for the provisional waiting room is 3.6 million euros. This includes the costs for the construction of the transition structure from the passenger boarding bridge to the waiting room, a construction subsidy, the costs of renting the waiting room over a period of two years and internal operating expenses during the rental period.
Air traffic areas
After it opens, BER will be in operation for several years together with the terminals in the old Schönefeld Airport. The so-called “double-roof operation” also involves the flight operation areas being adjusted. The connections between the north and the south of the airport will have to be upgraded and, at the same time, a replacement apron will be built in SXF further east due to stands being eliminated on the area of the future government airport. Around 83,000 square meters of new asphalt were laid for taxiways K5, K6 and apron 3b. The construction costs amount to more than 22 million euros. In addition, rainwater retention structures with a storage volume of 1,400 cubic metres were constructed.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Engelbert Lütke Daldrup, CEO of Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH: “The reconstruction work on Pier 3a to SXF and the good progress regarding the construction of the new Terminal T2 at BER show that we are thinking beyond the completion of the large passenger terminal at BER. We are keeping an eye on both the rising number of passengers and the improvement of the quality of our passengers’ time at the airport. The site of BER airport will be further developed systematically after it goes into operation in October 2020. We will proceed step by step and in units, always being guided by what is actually needed.”
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